


this patina of slightly bruised longing

by emollience



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Not quite romance yet, Pining, post-season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience
Summary: “The others — They could come back to this. To the place where they grew up and the family they’ve always known. It’s like it all clicked back for them. But for you and Coran: It’s not Altea. Or the castle.”She steps closer, her fingers curling over the edge of the railing, the large sleeves of her sweater just barely grazing her knuckles. “And you?”“Me?”“You said the others. ‘They’. Not ‘us.’” She tilts her head and the hair falling loose from her bun brushes her cheek. Keith’s hands itch. “Isn’t this home for you as well?”or: keith and allura discuss home, family, and the past on earth.





	this patina of slightly bruised longing

> _but everyone had this patina_  
>  _of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of_  
>  _I think I knew you when we were children,_  
>  _this look of I’ve loved you ever since you were born_  
>  _and probably longer than that_
> 
> **Paul Hostovsky** , from “Everyone was Beautiful,”  _Dear Truth_  (Main Street Rag, 2009)

 

//

 

“Too loud back there?”

Allura’s ears perk up before settling down. She stands rigid straight, her arms crossed tight across her chest. The pink sweater Lance’s sister loaned hangs loose on her form. The chatter and bass of music fades this far from the house, though Keith’s ears still ache ever so slightly.

“Not quite,” she says.

Keith comes to a stop besides her and leans forward, arms resting on the railing. This late at night the pier hums loud with the waves below, the languid breeze kissing past, but lacks the shrieks and laughs and buzz of conversation that all beaches adopt throughout the day. Or so says Lance, who grew up by the water. Keith’s father was never one to settle on a beach vacation.

This close the splattering of freckles laid over the bridge of Allura’s nose give off the faintest of pink glows. Her gaze pierces forward, settled on the gentle movement of the dark water below. A lock of loose hair curls against the sharp line of her jaw.

Keith’s eyes snap ahead, falling on the wooden railing. A splinter rises up just a few centimeters from his forearm, right by a faint etching of O+V surrounded by a heart.

“It’s…odd,” Allura starts, “to see the home you’ve all spoken of so fondly.”

He looks back at her. The tense line of her shoulders rises as she looks down.

“It’s odd to be back,” he says.

“Yes, I would imagine.” She gnaws on her lip. The sleeve of her sweater crumples as she grips it from the inside. His fingers twitch against the wood, but he holds his place. “I suppose I was not expecting to feel so…out of place once I arrived. It’s home to you all — to my family — and yet I —”

“It’s not home.”

Her head snaps towards him, but there’s no missing the fall of her shoulders.

Keith rubs a hand over the bridge of his nose. “The others — They could come back to this. To the place where they grew up and the family they’ve always known. It’s like it all clicked back for them. But for you and Coran: It’s not Altea. Or the castle.”

She steps closer, her fingers curling over the edge of the railing, the large sleeves of her sweater just barely grazing her knuckles. “And you?”

“Me?”

“You said the others. ‘They’. Not ‘us.’” She tilts her head and the hair falling loose from her bun brushes her cheek. Keith’s hands itch. “Isn’t this home for you as well?”

The shack in the woods was smaller than the childhood home he shared with his father. That home housed a twin bed with a worn red quilt folded haphazardly over the end and a brown leather couch with a hole on the cushion that his father reprimanded him for digging his fingers into. The walls creaked as the desert heat dissipated into the frigid cold of the night. Light filtered through the sheer white curtains early morning and the crackle and fizz of breakfast cooking woke him from infanthood to his father’s passing.

That was home, Keith supposes, though he trailed on his father’s heels and asked about his mom, and school, and the city, a litany of _why’s_ and _who’s_ and _what’s_ circling round his young head. Home, then, was confined to the desert sand cracking in informal patterns he’d trace with a stick and the lizards and other creatures he’d bring back as pets.

He straightens and his spine pops. Allura’s stare burns over the skin of his cheek and he’s all too aware of the scar splicing its way up his jaw to just below his eye, though the bright redness of it has faded in the following months. His hand twitches to run over it, but he keeps it in place.

“Kind of.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. It never felt like — like I belonged here. I always felt like there was more, y’know,” he gestures up at the sky, “out there.”

“I know what you mean,” she says. “Back on Altea, I always wanted to explore the universe like my father. See all that was out there, learn all that there was to know. And I loved the Blossom Canyons and the festivals and my people, but.” Her eyes flutter shut. Her lashes, long and white, brush against her cheeks. “I only ever traveled with father. Never on my own until —”

“Yeah.” He looks down at his hands. A scar runs down the side of his index finger, paler than the rest of his hand. He runs his thumb over it. “Earth is…the planet I was born. But it’s not — When Shiro took me in and brought me to the Garrison and I flew for the first time that was…that was the first I ever felt—”

“—At ease?”

“Yeah.”

“Like you could do anything and everything.” Keith nods. Allura leans forward and breathes in deep. “Father was so terrified when I first flew the castle.”

He snorts. “So was mine when I first used his bike.”

“It’s a rite of passage for all fathers, I suppose.” She laughs. His chest tightens. “I’m glad you found your mother, Keith.”

The corner of his mouth twitches up. “Me too. She’s…not exactly what I imagined but—”

“The similarities are striking.” She reaches over and tugs at the ends of his hair, a smile curling on her lips. His face burns and he leans back, sputtering for a response as she giggles into a hand.

“I apologize,” she says. “It was hard to resist the urge.”

His heart beats loud in his ears and the phantom warmth of her hand lingers on the back of his neck. Keith waves away her apology. “It’s fine.”

She quirks an eyebrow. Her hand retreats back into the oversized sleeve. The fabric is thick and quilted, far too heavy for the Cuban climate, though he catches no sign of sweat on her brow. Since they’ve arrived on Earth, he’s taken to wearing his father’s old tee shirts. They still fit loose, but no longer hang three sizes too large. The thin cotton material sticks to his skin at all hours, dark spots peppered throughout the fabric. Count to think of it, he’s never seen Coran sweat either ( — not counting the slipperies, the dredged up memory grotesque and something he’d like to repress).

He glances back at Allura. She stares up at the sky, her mouth turned up in a smile, no longer tense and uncomfortable like before. Instead her shoulders form a smooth curve, almost as elegant as the line of her neck.

His mouth dries. He looks down at his hands once more.

Two years is a long time. And while the others remained the same, outside that pocket of space where time warped and moved on its own, Keith wears the years in the length of his hair and limbs, the tiny nicks and scars from surviving on a foreign animal so long. Last he saw her, Allura could meet his gaze easily, but now he towers like Lance. It’s an odd thing to realize — that while he traveled and grew for two years, his friends hardly budged.

“Allura?”

“Hm?”

He meets her gaze. Her brow is raised. The sweater’s neck fits a little too loose, revealing a sliver of the brown skin of her throat, more than ever shown by her dress or battle suit or paladin armor. His hands are clammy in a way he’d normally take care of by wiping the sweat on the leg of his pants, though the action would pique her attention, wouldn’t it?

“I never…” The skin between his eyebrows wrinkles and his mouth is dry. The words come easy in his mind, but now it’s like tugging at the end of a taught rope. A part of him clams up at continuing the train of thought, the part that let his mask shield him from Allura’s stare across a crowd of refugees. He clears his throat. “I never…thanked you. For what you said. Before I left to really join the Blade of Marmora.”

“—Thanked me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I, uh,” he starts, meeting her confused stare. “I know that I — I didn’t want to hear it, at the time. Especially because of what happened with Regris. And I still…I don’t regret joining the Blades. But I…I appreciated that…that you cared enough to say something.” His throat threatens to close. “I still do.”

She watches him, eyes searching his face for — he’s not sure for what, exactly, but whatever it is she seems to find as she settles a hand on his and squeezes.

“I’ll remember this next time you tell me you don’t want a lecture.”

_That_ forces a snort out of him. He covers his eyes with his free hand, smiling, and shifts the other so that Allura’s palm presses against his own. She intertwines their fingers.

“Hopefully I won’t need as many anymore.”

“That’s a sentiment we all share.”

He laughs again and this time she joins him, dissolving into a fit of giggles she tries to hide behind her free hand.

“There you two are!”

Keith snatches his hand from Allura’s grip, turning to look back at Pidge standing in the middle of the pier, arms crossed. He doesn’t miss the way Pidge’s eyes flick away from where he and Allura had held hands up to meet his gaze, nor the eyebrow she raises. And if his face warms, it’s entirely to do with the humidity.

“Hunk sent out a search party when he noticed you guys went missing,” she says. “I think he’s still a little paranoid that the Garrison might strap us to a table if they find us.”

“I doubt they’d find us here. They aren’t allowed off U.S. territory.” Keith folds his arms across his chest.

“Yeah, well, make sure to tell him that while he yells at you.” Pidge crinkles her nose. She reaches out and tugs on the sleeve of Allura’s sweater. “C’mon. I still gotta show you how to play Battlestar Galactica.”

Allura groans, letting Pidge drag her away. “But I’m _horrid_ at those games.”

“That’s why I’m teaching you. Geesh, show some appreciation.”

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Keith trails after them. A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth, only to form full fledge when he walks into Lance’s home and catches sight of a frantic Hunk fussing over Allura.

She meets his gaze over Hunk’s shoulder and the corners of her eyes crinkle when she smiles. All these years, he believed himself opaque. He’s never felt more transparent.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from the poem quoted at the beginning of this fic! 
> 
> originally this was gonna be a 'keith and allura discuss the events of s6' fic, but it took a life of its own. mostly inspired by my rp partner and i discussing how keith and allura, if given the chance outside of war, would talk easily about everything and anything.


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